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Introduction

As we have seen above, Gramps offers you a series of Views. Each of these Views gives you opportunities to enter and edit information. In fact, you can often get to the same information from different Views.

In Gramps, information is entered and edited through what we call dialogs. Since we use that term frequently, we should define what we mean by it:

A dialog is a pop-up window that provides one or more forms for entering and editing data that fits a certain category. Examples in Gramps include the Edit Person dialog and the Family Editor dialog, among many others.

A dialog often includes a series of "notebook tabs" that group the information into subcategories. For example, the Edit Person dialog has notebook tabs for subcategories such as Events, Attributes, Addresses, and Notes, among others.

Add, Remove, and Edit buttons

In most cases, Gramps uses a + to correspond to Add+ , a - correspond to Remove , and an icon of a pen on a sheet of paper to denote Edit. We will continue referring to the latter as the Edit+ button, while using + and - to denote the two former buttons.

Editing information about people

An overview of the elements

Fig. 5.1 Edit person

Information about people is entered and edited through the Edit Person dialog. This dialog can be invoked from different Views in the following ways:

Select the name by single click and then click the Edit buttton on the toolbar.

Select the name and then press Enter .

Select Edit... from the Edit menu of Gramps

Select Edit from the context menu that appears upon right-click on the name.

From the Relationships: To edit the Active Person's data, click on the Edit button next to the Active Person's name.

From the Ancestry Category: Double-click in the box having the name of the person whose data you want to edit.

In each of the above cases, the Edit Person dialog will appear:

The top of the window has two parts: The basic information about the Preferred name of the person, and a section General with the privacy button (to set the record as private), the gender selector, an ID you can give this record, and a marker you can assign to the person indicating the state of the record (complete, TODO, uncertain, ....) which will give this record a specific color in the person view.

Below this top section, there are several "tabs" containing different categories of available information. Click any tab to view and edit its contents.

Clicking the OK button at the bottom will apply all the changes made in all tabs and close the dialog window. Clicking the Cancel button will close the window without applying any changes.
If any data in any tabs were modified, an alert window will appear, prompting you to choose from the following options: close the dialog without saving changes, cancel the initial cancel request, or save the changes.

Note

Clicking OK will immediately save changes to the database. There is no need for a Save operation, since all changes are immediate.

Tip

If a tab label is in boldface type, this means it contains data. If not, it has no data.

Preferred name section

The preferred or default name is the name that will be used in Gramps for the 'name' of the person. You can set in the Gramps Preferences how a name is displayed, and in most places you will see only the preferred name. Only detailed reports (textual and Narrative Web site generator) show also the alternate names. Note however that searching on a name will search in all names attached to a person, not only the preferred name.

The preferred name section contains the typical name information you will edit on creation of a person. Not all possible name information is shown here, only the most used fields. To see the full range of data you can store about a name, click the edit button after the Preferred name label. This will show the Name Editor.

The name fields of the preferred name in the Person Editor are:

Given name, the person's given name

Family name, the part of a person's name indicating the family to which the person belongs

Family prefix, an optional prefix for the family name that is not used in sorting, such as de or van and Suffix, an optional suffix to the name, such as Jr. or III, selector

Patronymic, which is the component of a personal name based on the name of one's father, grandfather, and Title, which is a title used to refer to the person such as Dr. or Rev., selector,

Call name, officially this is the part of the given name that is the normally used name. Eg, a person can have 3 given names as in Jean Baptiste Jules, where in reality only Baptiste is used. In Germany and some other places, it was customary to underline the callname among the different given names, see also here. Some people will use this field also for nickname, or changes to the Given name (like Cristy for Cristina), but this is not the intended use. A call name is a proper legal name. For nick names, or short name variants, you should create an alternative name with a different type.

Type of the name (birth name, married name, nick name, short name, etc.). It is advised to use for the preferred name a name with legal tender as that is what most often is found on documents, and store other name types in the Name tab of the Person Editor.

The Family name and Type fields provide an "autocompletion" feature: as you type in these fields, a menu appears below the field containing database entries that match your partial input. This gives you a shortcut by letting you select an entry that already exists in the database rather than having to type it all out. You can select the entry using your mouse or using your arrow and Enter keys.

Nickname is a descriptive name given in place of or in addition to the official given name. Family Nickname is non official name given to a family to distinguish them of people with the same family name. Often referred to as eg. Farm name.

This page's factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information. Please help improve the Gramps Wiki as a useful resource by updating it.

General section

The field ID displays the GRAMPS ID number which identifies the user in the database. This value helps you distinguish between people who have the same name. You may enter any unique value you want. If you do not provide a value, Gramps will automatically select a value for you.

The Privacy button lets you mark whether or not the person's record is considered private.

The Tags list lets you assign your custom tags and specify some basic information on the status of your research.

Preferred image

The person editor also shows in the top right an image region. This Image area shows the first image available in the Gallery of this person (if any exist).

Person tab pages

The tabs reflect the following categories of personal data:

Events: The Events tab lets you view and edit any events relevant to the person. The bottom part of the window lists all such events stored in the database. The top part shows the details of the currently selected event in the list (if any). The buttons + , Edit , and - allow you to add, modify, and remove an event record from the database. Note that the Edit and - buttons become available only when an event is selected from the list.

Names:

Fig. 5.2 Names

The Names tab lets you view and edit any alternate names the person may have. The bottom part of the window lists all alternate names for the person stored in the database. The top part shows the details of the currently selected name in the list (if any). The buttons + , Edit , and - allow the addition, modification, and removal of an alternate name from the database. Note that the Edit and - buttons become available only when an alternate name is selected from the list.

When you add a new name or edit an existing name, the Name Editor dialog is invoked. This Names dialog is described in the Name Editor section

Attributes:

Fig. 5.3 Attributes

The Attributes tab lets you view and assign attributes to the person. You have complete freedom to define and use attributes. For example, attributes might be assigned to describe the person's physical characteristics or personality traits.

Note that each attribute listed in the Attribute dialog consists of two parts: the Attribute itself and a Value associated with that Attribute. This so-called "Parameter-Value" pairing can help you organize and systematize your research. For example, if you define "Hair color" as an Attribute for a person, "Hair Color" will become a selectable Attribute for all other people. The Value of Hair Color for person A might be red, and brown for person B. In similar fashion, you might define an Attribute like "Generosity" and use the Value of "Enormous" to describe a particularly generous person.

The bottom part of the dialog window displays the list of all Attributes stored in the database. The top part shows the details of the currently selected attribute in the list (if any). The buttons + , Edit , and - let you add, modify, and remove an attribute record from the database. Note that the Edit and - buttons become available only when an attribute is selected from the list.

Several predefined attributes refer to values present in the GEDCOM standard.

Addresses:

Fig. 5.4 Addresses

The Addresses tab lets you view and record the various mailing addresses of the person. You are advised to use a residence event to store information of residency of a person. The address tab is offered mainly for compatibility with the GEDCOM standard where the rationale of addresses is mailing only.

The bottom part of the window lists all addresses stored in the database. The top part shows the details of the currently selected address in the list (if any). The buttons + , Edit , and - allow you to correspondingly add, modify, and remove an address record from the database. Note that the Edit and - buttons become available only when an address is selected from the list.

Some reports allow you to restrict data on living people. In particular, that option will omit their addresses.

Notes:

Fig. 5.5 Notes

The Notes tab provides a place to record various items about the person that do not fit neatly into other categories, as well as text excerpts you want to add to the family tree. You can share notes between different records in Gramps. The iconbar in this tabpage offers the usual buttons: add a note, select an existing note to add, edit a selected note, remove a note, and reorder buttons to change the order of the notes

The Sources tab allows you to view and document the sources for the information you collect.

These might be general sources that do not describe a specific event, but which nevertheless yield information about the person. For example, if Aunt Martha's memoirs mention her great-grandson Paul, the researcher may assume that this Paul actually existed and cite Aunt Martha's memoirs as the source that justifies this assumption.

Tip

Sources which document specific events are best recorded as sources of the event (under the Events tab) instead of as a source of the person. The person's Sources tab is best used for any sources not specifically connected to any other data.

The central part displays the list of all source references stored in the database in relation to the person. The buttons + , Edit , and - allow you to correspondingly add, modify, and remove a source reference to this person. Note that the Edit , and - buttons become available only when a source reference is selected from the list.

On edit you can change the data in the source reference (unique to this person), as well as the shared source object, see Editing Source References.

Gallery:

Fig. 5.7 Gallery

The Gallery tab lets you view and store photos, videos, and other media objects that are associated with the person. The central part of the window lists all such media objects. Any object in the form of a valid image file will result in the display of a thumbnail view of the image. For other objects such as audio files, movie files, etc., a corresponding file type icon is displayed instead.

Tip

The first available image in the gallery will be also displayed in the Image area in the General tab.

The buttons + , Edit , and - let you add a new image to the database, link to an image already stored in the database, modify an image, and remove a given media object from the person's gallery. Note that the Edit , and - buttons become available only when a media object is selected from the list. You arrive on the Media reference editor

Note

Removing a media object from a person's gallery does not remove it from the database. It only removes the reference to that object from this person's record.

Internet:

Fig. 5.8 Internet

The Internet tab displays Internet addresses relevant to the person. A descriptive caption of the Internet location you are storing. Type of internet address as needed to navigate to it, eg. http://gramps-project.org, E-mail, Web Page, ...

The bottom part lists all such Internet addresses and accompanying descriptions. The top part shows the details of the currently selected addresses in the list (if any). The buttons + , Edit , and - let you add, modify, and remove an Internet address. The "Go" button (represented by an icon having a green arrow and yellow circle) opens your web browser and takes you directly to the highlighted page. Note that the Edit , and -buttons become available only when an address is selected from the list.

Associations

Fig. 5.9 Associations

The Associations tab lets you view and edit information about the associations between people in the database. The associations may include Godparents, family friends, or any other types of associations you may wish to record. Use Events instead for relations connected to specific time frames or occasions. Events can be shared between people, each indicating their role in the event.

LDS

Fig. 5.10 LDS

The LDS (Latter Days Saints) tab lets you view and edit information about LDS ordinances of the person.

These are LDS Baptism, Endowment, and Sealed to Parents ordinances, as labeled inside the tab. Each ordinance is described by its date, LDS temple, and Place where it happened.

An additional pop-up menu, "Parents," is available for the Sealed to Parents ordinance. Each ordinance can be further described through the selections available in the Status pop-up menu. It can also be include notes and references to sources through the corresponding Sources... and Note buttons.

Editing dates

This section describes how to enter and modify dates. Since dates are so important in genealogical research, Gramps takes special care to preserve and use any date information available.

Information can be entered into a date field by directly typing it or by invoking the Date selection dialog. Both methods will be discussed below, but first, we will cover some important features of dates as they are used in Gramps.

Date types

Dates in Gramps are classified according to the following types:

Regular: A "regular" date is one which includes a specific day, date, or month. It can be complete (e.g., June 6, 1990) or partial (e.g., July 1977).

Before: A "before" date is one that can only be identified as occurring before a certain day, month, or year.

After: An "after" date is one that occurs after a certain day, month, or year.

Range: A "range" describes a time period during which the event occurred.

For example, "between January 1932 and March 1932."

Span: A "span" describes a time period during which a condition existed.

For example, "from May 12, 2000 to February 2, 2002."

Date formats and parsing rules

Gramps recognizes dates entered in a variety of formats. The default numeric format is that which is conventional for the environment is which Gramps is operating; that is, DD.MM.YYYY for most European countries, MM/DD/YYYY for the U.S., and so on.

Besides exact dates, Gramps recognizes many dates that are not regular: before, after, about, ranges and spans. It also understands the quality: estimated or calculated. Finally, it supports partial dates and many alternative calendars. Below is the list of date entry rules to allow precise date parsing.

Date parsing rules

The list only applies to the English version of Gramps. If you are using localized version of Gramps, your version may or may not provide a localized date parser. At the time of this writing, localized parsers exist for French, German, Russian, Finnish, Dutch, Spanish, Slovak and Swedish languages.
If the localized parser is available for your version, chances are that other rules are in effect. If there is no manual in your language yet, you may try following your instinct and go with the common ways of denoting dates in your language. If all else fails, use the Date selection dialog described below.

Regular single dates can be entered just as you would write them.

Examples: May 24, 1961 or January 1, 2004.

Dates that are not regular should start with the quality: estimated or calculated , if applicable. Example: est. 1961, or calc 2005. (Note that a quality does not need to be specified for regular dates.)

After the quality should appear the type. If the type is before , after , or about , you scan specify the type by writing "before", "after" or "about". If the type is a range, write "between DATE and DATE", and if the type is a span, write "from DATE to DATE". patterns, where DATE is a single date.

Examples: est from 2001 to 2003, before June 1975, est about 2000, calc between May 1900 and January 1, 1990.

Partial dates are entered simply by omitting unknown information.

Examples: May 1961 and 2004.

Calendars

Alternate calendars are calendars other than the Gregorian calendar. Currently, Gramps supports Hebrew, French Republican, Julian, Islamic, Persian, and Swedish alternate calendars. To specify the calendar other than the default Gregorian, append the name of the calendar to the date string, e.g. "January 9, 1905 (julian)" or use the drop down menu.

Swedish calender

The Swedish king, Karl XII, decided that Sweden should start using the Gregorian calendar. However, it was planned to take place gradually by skipping 11 leap days starting 1700-02-29 and end by 1744. So 1700-02-28 was followed by 1700-03-01. This took place during the Great Nordic War and the leap days were kept 1704 and 1708. In January 1711 the same king decided that Sweden should return to the Julian Calender by 1712-03-01. In order to be in phase, an extra day was inserted on 1712-02-30. And that was the end of the Swedish Calendar. Sweden converted to Gregorian in 1753-03-01, by skipping dates between 1752-02-18 and 1753-02-28.
In Gramps you can only enter valid dates for the Swedish Calender from 1700-03-01 to 1712-02-30. All other dates are flagged as not valid and has to be corrected.

Dual-dated dates

Dual-dated dates (also called "double dating", "slash dates", and sometimes "Old Style/New Style" dates) appear like "Jan 23, 1735/6". Often mistaken as a year uncertainty, this actually has a specific historic meaning. The dual dated date represents a time when an area was in a transition between moving to January 1 as the beginning of the new year. Thus Jan 23, 1735/6 is an indication to make it clear what date is being referred to. In this example, "Jan 23, 1736" might have occurred after "Jun 23, 1736".

England and the American colonies didn't officially accept the "Jan 1" as the new year date until 1752. Before 1752, the English government still officially observed March 25 as the first of the year, whereas most of the English population observed January 1 as the first of the year. Many people therefore wrote dates falling between January 1 and March 25 in the dual-dated format.

Sometimes, a dual date may appear as a fraction, as in this grave stone (170 and 3/4, which means 1703 and 1704):

Fig 5.11 Gravestone

Marking a date as dual dated can be done by simply putting a slash between the years. For example:

1721/2

1719/20

1799/800

These slash-years can appear anywhere in a date that a regular year can appear.

Dual-dated dates are currently represented in the Julian calendar so their month and day will be the same as that in the textual representation.

Alternate new year day

With dual-dated dates (and other dates) you may know that the new year was celebrated on a day other than January 1. To indicate this in Gramps, put the month/day code in parentheses, after the calendar (if one). For example:

Jan 20, 1865 (Mar25)

Jan 20, 1750 (Julian,Mar1)

Feb 23, 1710/1 (Mar25)

To indicate the beginning of a year that is different from that of January 1, you use the following codes:

Jan1

Mar1

Mar25

Sep1

You can put that as the only item in parenthesis, or right after a calendar name (comma, and no space).

Note that if new year's day is not Jan 1, then January will come after December that year. Dates with new year day codes will be sorted appropriately.

Date validity indicators

Fig. 5.12 Date selection dialog

Gramps uses a date validator.

While partial dates do not uniquely define the day, they allow at least for some type of comparisons between the dates.

Red cross means that the date is not recognized as a valid date (e.g. "Christmas week of 61", or "the summer when I had surgery"). In such a case the date will be stored as a text string and therefore cannot be compared to other dates. As you can see, it is best to avoid such date entries. It would be better, for example, to enter a date of "December 1961" and then to add the note "Christmas week of '61."

On the Person View, not recognized dates will be displayed in bold by default. Style for not recognized dates can be modified into Preferences.

Graphical User Interface for entering dates

While the above parsing rules provide a guide for you to type in most common dates, you can also use Date selection dialog. The dialog is particularly useful for building a complex date or for simply insuring that your information is entered in a way Gramps will understand. The Date selection dialog can be invoked by clicking the button next to the date entry field.

The Calendar menu lets you choose a calendar other than the default Gregorian. The Quality menu gives you the choices of Regular, Estimated, or Calculated. The Type menu allows you establish the exact date type: Regular, Before, After, About, Range, Span, and Text only. You can set the Date by setting the day, the month, and the year. In the event that your date type is Range or Span, the Second date will be activated. Finally, the Text comment text entry field allows storing an arbitrary text string along with the date.

Important comment about a date

If you have an important comment to make about a date, you are better off doing so in a Note that corresponds to the event than in the Text comment field of the Date selection dialog. We recommend this for the following reason: If you enter a date by typing it directly into the date field (that is, not via the Date selector dialog), your entry will be copied and stored as the text comment string when Gramps parses the entered text. Thus, any comment that may have been there prior to the parsing will be overwritten.

Editing information about relationships

Fig. 5.13 Family editor

Information about relationships is entered and edited through the Family Editor dialog. This dialog may be invoked in a number of ways:

From Family View: select the family in the list and then click the Edit button on the Toolbar, or double-click on the family.

From Ancestry Views: point your mouse over the black line connecting the spouses, right-click and select Edit from the context menu, or double-click on the black line.

Any of these methods will prompt you with the following Family Editor dialog:

The top of the window shows the names of the people whose relationship is being edited, as well as their birth and death information. The main part of the window displays three Relationship Information fields and the seven notebook tabs representing different categories of information about the relationship. Click any tab to view or edit the information it contains. The bottom part has OK and Cancel buttons. Clicking the OK button at any time will apply all the changes made in all tabs and close the dialog window. Clicking the Cancel button at any time will close the window without applying any changes. If any of the data in any tab is modified, an alert window will appear that will prompt you choose between closing the dialog without saving changes, canceling the initial cancel request, or saving the changes.

Note

Clicking OK will immediately save changes to the database. This version of Gramps does not have a separate saving function, all changes are immediate.

Tip

If a tab label is in boldface type, this means it contains data. If not, it has no data.

The Relationship Information section fields have the basic description of the relationship. The ID field displays the ID number which labels this relationship in the database. Leave generated by Gramps. The available types (such as Married, Unmarried, etc.) can be chosen from the drop-down Relationship type menu. The Marker allows you to specify some basic information on the status of your research.

The tabs provide the following information categories of relationship data:

Children

The Children tab lets you view and edit the list of children in this relationship. The + button allows entering a new person to the database and adding that person as a child in this relationship. The Select button lets you select an existing person to be a child in the relationship. The Edit button allows for editing the relations between the selected child and the parents. Finally, the - lets you remove the selected child from the relationship. Note that the Edit and - buttons become available only when a child is selected from the list.

Note

Removing a child from the list does not delete that child from the database. It simply removes the child from this relationship.

Tip

Use arrows (up/down) or drag and drop for setting children order into the family.

Events

Fig. Events on Family editor

The Events tab lets you view and edit the list of events relevant to the relationship. The buttons + , Edit , and - let you add, modify, or remove an event record from the database. Note that the Edit and - buttons become available only when an event is selected from the list.

Note

Removing an event from the list does not delete that event from the database. It simply removes the event reference from this relationship.

Sources

Fig. 5.14 Sources editor

The Sources tab lets you view and edit a list of references to the sources that provide evidence for the relationship. These might be documents that refer to the relationship, but which do not necessarily document it officially. For example, if Aunt Martha's memoirs mention that her great-grandson Paul was married, the researcher may take this as evidence of the relationship between Paul and his wife existed and cite the memoirs as the source for this assumption.

Tip

Sources that document specific events such as marriages or divorces are better filed in relation to those events, under the Events tab.

The buttons + , Edit , and - allow let you add, modify, and remove a source reference to this relationship. Note that the Edit and - buttons become available only when a source reference is selected from the list.

Note

Removing an entry from the list does not delete that source from the database. It simply removes the source reference from this relationship.

Attributes

The Attributes tab lets you view and edit particular information about the relationship that can be expressed as attributes. The buttons + , Edit , and - let you add, modify, or remove an attribute. Note that the Edit and - buttons become available only when an attribute is selected from the list.

Notes

The Notes tab lets you view and edit notes associated with the relationship. These could be any comments which do not naturally fit into the "Parameter-Value" pairs available to Attributes. To add a note or modify existing notes simply edit the text in the text entry field.

The Format option lets you set the way the note will appear in reports and web pages. If you select Flowed, the text generated will have single spaces put in place of all multiple spaces, tabs, and single end-of-line characters. A blank line inserted between two blocks of text will signal a new paragraph; additional inserted lines will be ignored.

If you select the Preformatted option, the text in reports and web pages will appear exactly as you enter it in the Notes dialog.

Gallery

The Gallery tab lets you store and display photos and other media objects associated with the relationship. The central part of the window lists all such objects and gives you a thumbnail preview of image files. Other objects such as audio files, movie files, etc., are represented by a generic Gramps icon. The buttons + , Select , Edit , and - let you add a new image, add a reference to an existing image, modify an existing image, and remove a media object's link to the relationship. Note that the Edit and - buttons become available only when a media object is selected from the list.

LDS

The LDS (Latter Days Saints) tab displays information about the LDS Sealed to Spouse ordinance. The data can include date, LDS temple, and Place. The status of the ordinance can be described through the selections available in the Status pop-up menu and can also be referenced in the corresponding Sources... and Note buttons.

To edit source data, switch to the Sources View and select the desired entry in the list of sources. Double-click that entry or click the Edit icon on the toolbar to invoke the following Source Editor dialog:
The main part of the window displays four notebook tabs containing different categories of information. Click a tab to view or edit its contents. The bottom part of the window has OK and Cancel buttons. Clicking OK will apply all the changes made in all tabs and close the dialog window. Clicking the Cancel button will close the window without applying any changes.

Note

Clicking OK will immediately save changes to the database (write on disk). All changes are immediate.

Tip

If a tab label is in boldface type, this means it contains data. If not, it has no data.